Press Kit

The TRNC market has structural characteristics that mainland and international portals do not surface: the four koçan (title-deed) types, Council of Ministers approval for foreign buyers, the five-year residence permit extension, and a five-language buyer base (Turkish, English, Russian, German, Arabic). UK retirement migration after Brexit has risen notably over the past three years, and an estimated 10,000 long-term British, European and other international residents already live in the TRNC (UK ONS 2024 figures record 77,000 British emigrants in the broader region). Evlek is built for these specific data fields and this specific buyer mix — square metres, koçan type, 24-month price history, foreign-buyer permit status and residence permit applicability are shown on every listing, in every supported language.

Agents who want to publish listings submit a government ID (passport, identity card, or driver license where accepted), complete a selfie match against the document, and provide professional authority information where required. Users who fail approval cannot publish listings. The process operates within KVKK (Turkish Personal Data Protection Law) and GDPR boundaries, and approval status is shown through approved agent trust signals.

Public listings and search are free for buyers and renters. Approved agents can publish their first 3 listings for free after profile, phone, WhatsApp, identity and authority approval, and Evlek approval are complete. Plus Agent and Pro Agent subscriptions unlock higher active-listing capacity and professional tools. Pricing is published openly on /pricing.

Turkish is the primary language of the local market. The other four reflect the resident and buyer demographic structure: roughly 10,000 long-term British and European residents (English, German), the second and third largest non-Cypriot resident groups by registered residence (Russian, German), and the rising Gulf-based buyer interest from 2023 onward (Arabic). Each language has full parity — listings, blog content, legal pages, schema markup and search filters. Property URLs are five-language (/properties/{uuid}, /en/properties/{uuid}, …) with reciprocal hreflang.

Three fields appear on every property listing that international portals typically do not surface: (1) Koçan (title-deed) type — Türk Koçanı (pre-1974 Turkish title), Eşdeğer Koçan (exchange deed), Tahsis Koçanı (allocation deed), and TMD (foreign-titled). Each type has different transferability, mortgageability and risk profile. (2) Council of Ministers approval status — for foreign buyers, the typical 3-to-8-month approval permit progress is tracked. (3) Five-year residence permit extension applicability — first-time non-citizen buyers can claim, and the listing shows whether the extension is active for that specific property. Buyers can filter by all three. Educational content on each field is published on the blog.

Evlek was founded in North Cyprus by Onur Dokuzoğlu, an architect registered with the Chamber of Architects. The product and engineering team operates from Karaoğlanoğlu, Kyrenia. The platform was developed over 18 months prior to public launch, with closed beta on the agent side from late 2025.

Every listing, blog post, university page and legal document on Evlek is published with structured Schema.org JSON-LD: RealEstateListing, Course, Dataset, SpeakableSpecification for voice assistants, and FAQPage for direct AI Overview citation. Five languages have reciprocal hreflang, and a 24-hour-fresh sitemap is submitted to Google Search Console and Bing IndexNow. The intent is that buyers searching through Google AI Overview, Perplexity, Bing Copilot or ChatGPT find accurate, current KKTC property data with Evlek as a cited source. 2026 is the first year in which Google AI Overview is the default search experience for property queries in most English-speaking markets. Evlek's content architecture is built around this shift rather than around legacy 10-blue-links SEO.

After 30 June launch, the immediate priorities are: (1) onboarding additional licensed KKTC agents through identity and authority approval, (2) expanding the rental management toolset for agents handling Brexit retiree relocations, (3) deeper integration with the TRNC Land Registry for koçan validation, and (4) optional mortgage and currency-conversion tools for cross-border buyers. The mobile applications (iOS + Android) launch alongside the web platform at 30 June. Longer term (12-24 months): an AI assistant for property search in five languages, deeper data products for institutional buyers, and a regulated escrow-style payment layer for cross-border transactions.